Bilbao holidays

Ereaga Beach is just a 20-minute drive from the city centre, and its 800-metre stretch of fine sand plays host to everything from concerts to beach football tournaments. There’s a thriving watersports scene, too, with surfers, bodyboarders and canoeists all flocking here to ride the waves.

Las Arenas Beach is right by the Viscaaya Bridge and just along the coast from Ereaga. It’s a far smaller spot than its neighbour, but still attracts a fair few watersports fans – partly due to the sailing school on the sands.

Gorrondatxe’s dark sands are backed up by a rugged landscape of grass dunes and rocky cliff faces, which look great in the holiday snaps. This beach is another popular spot with surfers due to its choppy waters, and it’s within daytripping distance, too – just a 25-minute taxi ride away from Bilbao city centre.

Every Sunday morning, the city’s old town square, Plaza Nueva, plays host to a large flea market that sells everything from old stamps and coins to records, books and comics.

Just a 10-minute stroll from the heart of the city centre, the Zubiarte Shopping Centre in the Indautxu district is teeming with familiar high street names, including the likes of H&M and Mango.

Spain’s largest department store chain, El Corte Ingles, has a branch right in the heart of the city centre. It brims with big-name brands, from Calvin Klein to Hugo Boss.

The Abando district around the city centre is filled with casual pintxos bars made for grazing and people-watching, with several dotted around the Moyua Square.

Just across the river from the city centre is the Casco Viejo neighbourhood, which makes up Bilbao’s Medieval old quarter. It’s full of late-night bars and clubs, and there are even repurposed theatres and churches, which have been given a new lease of life on the nightlife front.

Typically served on top of bread, these bite-sized dishes spotlight local flavours from the Basque country and are served in bars throughout Bilbao. They’re a little similar in style to tapas – but don’t let the locals hear you say that.

This mix of red wine and cola was dreamed up decades ago as a way of stopping out-of-date wine from going to waste. Nowadays, it’s a popular cocktail that’s served in bars all across the Basque region.

Bacalao by itself is dried, salted cod, but it’s the pil-pil sauce that makes this dish unique to the region. It’s made of garlic and chilli, which is infused in hot olive oil and heated in a pan in a circular motion. It’s said that pil-pil refers to the bubbling sound that’s created by the sauce heating up.

This traditional Basque fish stew is named after the pot it’s cooked in, and was an easy-to-prepare dish on the city’s fishing boats in years gone by. It’s made up of juicy chunks of white tuna, potatoes, spring onion, pepper, garlic and tomato.

Similar in style to ratatouille, pisto consists of courgette, pepper, tomato and onion. But there’s one major difference between the two dishes – pisto’s usually served with a fried egg on top as well.